Opusculum De Viduitate Servanda

A Little Work On Preserving Widowhood. Listen, abandoned daughter, you who have lost the comfort of love, from whose neck the yoke has been lifted. Behold, you will be more blessed if you remain thus. Do not let a vain thought seduce you, saying: "Who will provide me with food in time, or who will protect my orphans?" You ought to rejoice now more than when you were bound by the bond of a husband. Behold, you are freed from the law of a man, in which you were held, so that you may be your own mistress. Do not sigh because you have lost the hope of this world: remember, Daughter, that the Lord is the hope of all the ends of the earth. Do not be anxious because you have remained alone; remember the Lord, who takes up the orphan and the widow. Pray to the Lord, as the Apostle says: She who is truly a widow and desolate persists in prayers and supplications day and night; for she who lives in luxury is dead. If a widow has parents and grandchildren, let her first learn to rule her own house well and to return mutual service to her parents, for this is pleasing and acceptable before the Lord. Be humble, and modest, and sober in all things, lest you seem abominable; for it is written: Reject younger widows, for when they have become wanton, they wish to marry in Christ, having condemnation because they have made their first faith void. Not only are they idle, but also talkative and curious, they learn to go around other people's houses, speaking of things which they ought not.

Be diligent in your home, weeping and praying that He may grant you chastity of body or continence. How unhappy and wretched you are, what an evil reproach you bear, if you do not contain yourself! What a distraction you are to yourself, if you have no restraint over your flesh! Labor always in the work of God. Behold, the good widow, who is the wife of one man, if she has raised children, if she has received guests, if she has washed the feet of saints, if she has ministered to those suffering tribulation. You will be blessed if you have done all these things; for there are many widows who have had two or three husbands, but they do not have the precept that they be honored by all, as does she who has had one. Many widows existed in the days of Elijah, and to none of them was he sent, except to the one in Sarepta of Sidon. See that none of them had merit, except that one alone who received him as a guest in the day of need, when the famine was severe, and upon the arrival of holy Elijah, she set a table for him; just as that widow who had in her substance only two denarii, and hoping from a pure heart that she would receive a hundredfold, she offered these very coins to the Lord; and just as that widow named Judith, who did not depart from the upper rooms of her house, serving the Lord day and night with fasts and prayers, whom the Lord guarded from the hand of Holofernes, lest she be defiled in the work of sin. O how blessed is the widow who provided such joy to her citizens, and merited to acquire good hope for herself, so that she might free her people from the edge of the sword!

Behold what chastity has done for the widow, that she is named throughout the whole earth, praiseworthy to the Lord, and illustrious among all. How blessed you are, widow whom the Lord remembers! Just as that woman whose only son had died obtained mercy from the Lord so that he was revived; just as that widow in the Acts of the Apostles, named Dorcas, who gave many alms—all the widows, when Peter arrived, showed the garments that Dorcas had made for them while she lived. Peter saw the works of the widow, prayed, and revived her. Just as that widow who daily threw herself at the feet of a certain rich man to obtain vengeance against her adversary—when the rich man saw her weeping, he said: “If I do not fear the Lord, nor revere any man, yet because this widow is troublesome, I will avenge her.” Behold how the widow is avenged, if she obtains chastity and humility, and it has been commanded to me as well, that I should receive a visitation from her, as the apostle says: “Visit orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). Oh, how blessed you are, widow, who are so commended by the Lord in all things! But those who do not take pity on them are judged by the Lord Himself, who says: “You who do not judge the cases of widows and do not pity orphans, I will judge you,” says the Lord. Blessed are you, widow, because you have the Lord Himself as your judge and defender. Now weep for no one, daughter, for you have become better than you were before. Before, you placed your hope in a man.

Now, however, in the Lord Jesus Christ; before you thought according to man, now according to God; before you took delight in the lust of the flesh and the danger of dress, now you think of the sweetness of the law and chastity above all; before you were the handmaid of a man, now you are free, a handmaid of Christ. How good it is for you to be secure, rather than to suffer the servitude of a husband! It is good to lie alone in bed and to rise pure, rather than to lie conscious of lust and the uncleanness of the flesh. Before you were bowed down, and you were under the heavy yoke of a husband; now you are raised up under the gentle yoke of Christ. Rejoice, lily, because you had been sold, so that you were a handmaid of a man, now you have merited freedom from the Lord. Remember, daughter, the Canaanite woman, who through her importunity merited to obtain the benefit of our Savior, and also that woman who moistened the feet of the Lord with her tears and dried them with her hair, or that woman who brought precious ointment and poured it over the reclining Lord, or that woman who touched the garments of the Lord, and immediately the flow of her blood stopped, that woman who sat at the feet of the Lord, to hear how she might flee from the coming wrath. Consider, daughter, by what path of humility these same women walked, and from this they had good merit. Be you also like them in obedience, in humility, in almsgiving, in the reception of pilgrims, in vigils, in fasts, in all sobriety. These are the things that pleased Christ.

Strive, daughter, day and night in the work of the Lord, so that you who have been dismissed by man may be gathered up by the Lord; so that you who were about to receive the thirtieth part of the fruit may deserve to obtain the sixtieth, through Him who lives for ever and ever. Amen. Here ends Saint Augustine’s On the Consolation of the Dead.